Intro to ASP.NET MVC 4 with Visual Studio (Beta)

Rick Anderson and Scott Hanselman

Summary: This tutorial will teach you the basics of building an ASP.NET MVC Web application using Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express Beta for Web, which is a free version of Microsoft Visual Studio.

Category: Step-By-Step

Applies to: ASP.NET MVC 4 Beta, Visual Studio 11 Beta

Source: ASP.NET site (link to source content)

E-book publication date: May 2012

115 pages

Copyright © 2012 by Microsoft Corporation

All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

Microsoft and the trademarks listed at http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/en/us/IntellectualProperty/Trademarks/EN-US.aspx are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. All other marks are property of their respective owners.

The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, email addresses, logos, people, places, and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, email address, logo, person, place, or event is intended or should be inferred.

This book expresses the author’s views and opinions. The information contained in this book is provided without any express, statutory, or implied warranties. Neither the authors, Microsoft Corporation, nor its resellers, or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused either directly or indirectly by this book.

Contents

Getting Started

What You’ll Build

Skills You’ll Learn

Getting Started

Creating Your First Application

Adding a Controller

Adding a View

Changing Views and Layout Pages

Passing Data from the Controller to the View

Adding a Model

Adding Model Classes

Creating a Connection String and Working with SQL Server LocalDB

Accessing Your Model’s Data from a Controller

Creating a Movie

Examining the Generated Code

Strongly Typed Models and the @model Keyword

Working with SQL Server LocalDB

Examining the Edit Methods and Edit View

Processing the POST Request

Adding a Search Method and Search View

Displaying the SearchIndex Form

Adding Search by Genre

Adding Markup to the SearchIndex View to Support Search by Genre

Adding a New Field to the Movie Model and Table

Adding a Rating Property to the Movie Model

Managing Model and Database Schema Differences

Automatically Re-Creating the Database on Model Changes

Adding Validation to the Model

Keeping Things DRY

Adding Validation Rules to the Movie Model

Validation Error UI in ASP.NET MVC

How Validation Occurs in the Create View and Create Action Method

Adding Formatting to the Movie Model

Examining the Details and Delete Methods

Examining the Details and Delete Methods

Wrapping Up

Getting Started

By Rick Anderson and Scott Hanselman

This tutorial will teach you the basics of building an ASP.NET MVC Web application using Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express Beta for Web, which is a free version of Microsoft Visual Studio. Before you start, make sure you’ve installed the prerequisites listed below. You can install all of them by clicking the following link: Web Platform Installer.

If you’re using Visual Studio 11 Beta instead of Visual Studio 11 Express Beta for Web, install the prerequisites by clicking the following link: Web Platform Installer

A Visual Web Developer project with C# source code is available to accompany this topic. Download the C# version.

What You’ll Build

You’ll implement a simple movie-listing application that supports creating, editing, searching and listing movies from a database. Below are two screenshots of the application you’ll build. It includes a page that displays a list of movies from a database:

The application also lets you add, edit, and delete movies, as well as see details about individual ones. All data-entry scenarios include validation to ensure that the data stored in the database is correct.

Skills You’ll Learn

Here’s what you’ll learn:

- How to create a new ASP.NET MVC project.

- How to create ASP.NET MVC controllers and views.

- How to create a new database using the Entity Framework Code First paradigm.

- How to retrieve and display data.

- How to edit data and enable data validation.

Getting Started

Start by running Visual Web Developer 11 Express Beta(“Visual Web Developer” or VWD for short) and select New Project from the Start page.

Visual Web Developer is an IDE, or integrated development environment. Just like you use Microsoft Word to write documents, you’ll use an IDE to create applications. In Visual Web Developer there’s a toolbar along the top showing various options available to you. There’s also a menu that provides another way to perform tasks in the IDE. (For example, instead of selecting New Project from the Start page, you can use the menu and select File > New Project.)

Creating Your First Application

You can create applications using either Visual Basic or Visual C# as the programming language. Select Visual C# on the left and then select ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Application. Name your project “MvcMovie” and then click OK.

In the New ASP.NET MVC 4 Project dialog box, select Internet Application. LeaveRazor as the default view engine.

Click OK. Visual Web Developer used a default template for the ASP.NET MVC project you just created, so you have a working application right now without doing anything! This is a simple “Hello World!” project, and it’s a good place to start your application.

From the Debug menu, select Start Debugging.

Notice that the keyboard shortcut to start debugging is F5.

F5 causes Visual Web Developer to start IIS Express and run your web application. Visual Web Developer then launches a browser and opens the application’s home page. Notice that the address bar of the browser says localhost and not something like example.com. That’s because localhost always points to your own local computer, which in this case is running the application you just built. When Visual Web Developer runs a web project, a random port is used for the web server. In the image below, the port number is 41788. When you run the application, you’ll probably see a different port number.

Right out of the box this default template gives you Home, Contact and About pages. It also provides support to register and log in, and links to Facebook and Twitter. The next step is to change how this application works and learn a little bit about ASP.NET MVC. Close your browser and let’s change some code.

Adding a Controller

MVC stands for model-view-controller. MVC is a pattern for developing applications that are well architected, testable and easy to maintain. MVC-based applications contain:

- Models: Classes that represent the data of the application and that use validation logic to enforce business rules for that data.

- Views: Template files that your application uses to dynamically generate HTML responses.

- Controllers: Classes that handle incoming browser requests, retrieve model data, and then specify view templates that return a response to the browser.

We’ll be covering all these concepts in this tutorial series and show you how to use them to build an application.

Let’s begin by creating a controller class. In Solution Explorer, right-click the Controllers folder and then select Add Controller.

Name your new controller “HelloWorldController”. Leave the default template as Empty controller and click Add.

Notice in Solution Explorer that a new file has been created named HelloWorldController.cs. The file is open in the IDE.

Replace the contents of the file with the following code.

using System.Web;
using System.Web.Mvc;

namespace MvcMovie.Controllers
{
public class HelloWorldController : Controller
{
//
// GET: /HelloWorld/

public string Index()
{
return "This is my <b>default</b> action...";
}

//
// GET: /HelloWorld/Welcome/

public string Welcome()
{
return "This is the Welcome action method...";
}
}
}

Click here to view code as image

The controller methods will return a string of HTML as an example. The controller is named HelloWorldController and the first method above is named Index. Let’s invoke it from a browser. Run the application (press F5 or Ctrl+F5). In the browser, append “HelloWorld” to the path in the address bar. (For example, in the illustration below, it’s http://localhost:1234/HelloWorld.) The page in the browser will look like the following screenshot. In the method above, the code returned a string directly. You told the system to just return some HTML, and it did!

ASP.NET MVC invokes different controller classes (and different action methods within them) depending on the incoming URL. The default URL routing logic used by ASP.NET MVC uses a format like this to determine what code to invoke:

/[Controller]/[ActionName]/[Parameters]

Click here to view code as image

The first part of the URL determines the controller class to execute. So /HelloWorld maps to the HelloWorldController class. The second part of the URL determines the action method on the class to execute. So /HelloWorld/Index would cause the Index method of the HelloWorldController class to execute. Notice that we only had to browse to /HelloWorld and the Index method was used by default. This is because a method named Index is the default method that will be called on a controller if one is not explicitly specified.

Browse to http://localhost:xxxx/HelloWorld/Welcome. The Welcome method runs and returns the string “This is the Welcome action method...”. The default MVC mapping is /[Controller]/[ActionName]/[Parameters]. For this URL, the controller is HelloWorld and Welcome is the action method. You haven’t used the [Parameters] part of the URL yet.

Let’s modify the example slightly so that you can pass some parameter information from the URL to the controller (for example, /HelloWorld/Welcome?name=Scott&numtimes=4). Change your Welcome method to include two parameters as shown below. Note that the code uses the C# optional-parameter feature to indicate that the numTimes parameter should default to 1 if no value is passed for that parameter.

public string Welcome(string name, int numTimes = 1) {
return HttpUtility.HtmlEncode("Hello " + name + ", NumTimes is: " + numTimes);
}

Click here to view code as image

Run your application and browse to the example URL

(http://localhost:xxxx/HelloWorld/Welcome?name=Scott&numtimes=4). You can try different values for name and numtimes in the URL. The ASP.NET MVC model binding system automatically maps the named parameters from the query string in the address bar to parameters in your method.

In both these examples the controller has been doing the “VC” portion of MVC — that is, the view and controller work. The controller is returning HTML directly. Ordinarily you don’t want controllers returning HTML directly, since that becomes very cumbersome to code. Instead we’ll typically use a separate view template file to help generate the HTML response. Let’s look next at how we can do this.

Adding a View

In this section you’re going to modify the HelloWorldController class to use view template files to cleanly encapsulate the process of generating HTML responses to a client.

You’ll create a view template file using the Razor view engine introduced with ASP.NET MVC 3. Razor-based view templates have a .cshtml file extension, and provide an elegant way to create HTML output using C#. Razor minimizes the number of characters and keystrokes required when writing a view template, and enables a fast, fluid coding workflow.

Start by creating a view template with the Index method in the HelloWorldController class. Currently the Index method returns a string with a message that is hard-coded in the controller class. Change the Index method to return a View object, as shown in the following code:

public ActionResult Index()
{
return View();
}

Click here to view code as image

The Index method above uses a view template to generate an HTML response to the browser. Controller methods (also known as action methods), such as the Index method above, generally return an ActionResult (or a class derrived from ActionResult), not primitive types like string.

In the project, add a view template that you can use with the Index method. To do this, right-click inside the Index method and click Add View.

The Add View dialog box appears. Leave the defaults the way they are and click the Add button:

The MvcMovie\Views\HelloWorld folder and the MvcMovie\Views\HelloWorld\Index.cshtml file are created. You can see them in Solution Explorer:

The following shows the Index.cshtml file that was created:

Add the following HTML under the <h2> tag.

<p>Hello from our View Template!</p>

Click here to view code as image

The complete MvcMovie\Views\HelloWorld\Index.cshtml file is shown below.

@{
ViewBag.Title = "Index";
}
<h2>Index</h2>

<p>Hello from our View Template!</p>

Click here to view code as image

In solution explorer, right click the Index.cshtml file and select View in Page Inspector.

The Page Inspector tutorial has more information about this new tool.

Alternatively, run the application and browse to the HelloWorld controller (http://localhost:xxxx/HelloWorld). The Index method in your controller didn’t do much work; it simply ran the statement return View(), which specified that the method should use a view template file to render a response to the browser. Because you didn’t explicitly specify the name of the view template file to use, ASP.NET MVC defaulted to using the Index.cshtml view file in the \Views\HelloWorld folder. The image below shows the string hard-coded in the view.

Looks pretty good. However, notice that the browser’s title bar shows “Index My ASP.NET A” and the big link on the top of the page says “your logo here.” Below the “your logo here.” link are registration and log in links, and below that links to Home, About and Contact pages. Let’s change some of these.

Changing Views and Layout Pages

First, you want to change the “your logo here.” title at the top of the page. That text is common to every page. It’s actually implemented in only one place in the project, even though it appears on every page in the application. Go to the /Views/Shared folder in Solution Explorer and open the _Layout.cshtml file. This file is called a layout page and it’s the shared “shell” that all other pages use.

Layout templates allow you to specify the HTML container layout of your site in one place and then apply it across multiple pages in your site. Find the @RenderBody() line. RenderBody is a placeholder where all the view-specific pages you create show up, “wrapped” in the layout page. For example, if you select the About link, the Views\Home\About.cshtml view is rendered inside the RenderBody method.

Change the site-title heading in the layout template from “your logo here” to “MVC Movie”.

<div class="float-left">
<p class="site-title">@Html.ActionLink("MVC Movie", "Index", "Home")</p>
</div>

Click here to view code as image

Replace the contents of the title element with the following markup:

<title>@ViewBag.Title - Movie App</title>

Click here to view code as image

The ViewBag is a zzz (dict object) Run the application and notice that it now says “MVC Movie “. Click the About link, and you see how that page shows “MVC Movie”, too. We were able to make the change once in the layout template and have all pages on the site reflect the new title.

The complete _Layout.cshtml file is shown below:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<title>@ViewBag.Title - Movie App</title>
<link href="~/favicon.ico" rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" />
<link
href="@System.Web.Optimization.BundleTable.Bundles.ResolveBundleUrl("~/Content/css")"
rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link
href="@System.Web.Optimization.BundleTable.Bundles.ResolveBundleUrl("~/Content/themes
/base/css")" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<script
src="@System.Web.Optimization.BundleTable.Bundles.ResolveBundleUrl("~/Scripts/js")"><
/script>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />
</head>
<body>
<header>
<div class="content-wrapper">
<div class="float-left">
<p class="site-title">@Html.ActionLink("MVC Movie", "Index",
"Home")</p>
</div>
<div class="float-right">
<section id="login">
@Html.Partial("_LoginPartial")
</section>
<nav>
<ul id="menu">
<li>@Html.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home")</li>
<li>@Html.ActionLink("About", "About", "Home")</li>
<li>@Html.ActionLink("Contact", "Contact", "Home")</li>
</ul>
</nav>
</div>
</div>
</header>
<div id="body">
@RenderSection("featured", required: false)
<section class="content-wrapper main-content clear-fix">
@RenderBody()
</section>
</div>
<footer>
<div class="content-wrapper">
<div class="float-left">
<p>&copy; @DateTime.Now.Year - My ASP.NET MVC Application</p>
</div>
<div class="float-right">
<ul id="social">
<li><a href="http://facebook.com"
class="facebook">Facebook</a></li>
<li><a href="http://twitter.com"
class="twitter">Twitter</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</footer>
</body>
</html>

Click here to view code as image

Now, let’s change the title of the Index view.

Open MvcMovie\Views\HelloWorld\Index.cshtml. There are two places to make a change: first, the text that appears in the title of the browser, and then in the secondary header (the <h2> element). You’ll make them slightly different so you can see which bit of code changes which part of the app.

@{
ViewBag.Title = "Movie List";
}

<h2>My Movie List</h2>

<p>Hello from our View Template!</p>

Click here to view code as image

To indicate the HTML title to display, the code above sets a Title property of the ViewBag object (which is in the Index.cshtml view template). If you look back at the source code of the layout template, you’ll notice that the template uses this value in the <title> element as part of the <head> section of the HTML that we modified previously. Using this ViewBag approach, you can easily pass other parameters between your view template and your layout file.

Run the application and browse to http://localhost:xx/HelloWorld. Notice that the browser title, the primary heading, and the secondary headings have changed. (If you don’t see changes in the browser, you might be viewing cached content. Press Ctrl+F5 in your browser to force the response from the server to be loaded.) The browser title is created with the ViewBag.Title we set in the Index.cshtml view template and the additional “- Movie App” added in the layout file.

Also notice how the content in the Index.cshtml view template was merged with the _Layout.cshtml view template and a single HTML response was sent to the browser. Layout templates make it really easy to make changes that apply across all of the pages in your application.

Our little bit of “data” (in this case the “Hello from our View Template!” message) is hard-coded, though. The MVC application has a “V” (view) and you’ve got a “C” (controller), but no “M” (model) yet. Shortly, we’ll walk through how create a database and retrieve model data from it.

Passing Data from the Controller to the View

Before we go to a database and talk about models, though, let’s first talk about passing information from the controller to a view. Controller classes are invoked in response to an incoming URL request. A controller class is where you write the code that handles the incoming browser requests, retrieves data from a database, and ultimately decides what type of response to send back to the browser. View templates can then be used from a controller to generate and format an HTML response to the browser.

Controllers are responsible for providing whatever data or objects are required in order for a view template to render a response to the browser. A best practice: A view template should never perform business logic or interact with a database directly. Instead, a view template should work only with the data that’s provided to it by the controller. Maintaining this “separation of concerns” helps keep your code clean, testable and more maintainable.

Currently, the Welcome action method in the HelloWorldController class takes a name and a numTimes parameter and then outputs the values directly to the browser. Rather than have the controller render this response as a string, let’s change the controller to use a view template instead. The view template will generate a dynamic response, which means that you need to pass appropriate bits of data from the controller to the view in order to generate the response. You can do this by having the controller put the dynamic data (parameters) that the view template needs in a ViewBag object that the view template can then access.

Return to the HelloWorldController.cs file and change the Welcome method to add a Message and NumTimes value to the ViewBag object. ViewBag is a dynamic object, which means you can put whatever you want in to it; the ViewBag object has no defined properties until you put something inside it. The ASP.NET MVC model binding system automatically maps the named parameters (name and numTimes) from the query string in the address bar to parameters in your method. The complete HelloWorldController.cs file looks like this:

using System.Web;
using System.Web.Mvc;

namespace MvcMovie.Controllers
{
public class HelloWorldController : Controller
{
public ActionResult Index()
{
return View();
}

public ActionResult Welcome(string name, int numTimes = 1)
{
ViewBag.Message = "Hello " + name;
ViewBag.NumTimes = numTimes;

return View();
}
}
}

Click here to view code as image

Now the ViewBag object contains data that will be passed to the view automatically.

Next, you need a Welcome view template! In the Build menu, select Build MvcMovie to make sure the project is compiled.

Then right-click inside the Welcome method and click Add View.

Here’s what the Add View dialog box looks like:

Click Add, and then add the following code under the < h2> element in the new Welcome.cshtml file. You’ll create a loop that says “Hello” as many times as the user says it should. The complete Welcome.cshtml file is shown below.

@{
ViewBag.Title = "Welcome";
}

<h2>Welcome</h2>

<ul>
@for (int i=0; i < ViewBag.NumTimes; i++) {
<li>@ViewBag.Message</li>
}
</ul>

Click here to view code as image

Run the application and browse to the following URL:

http://localhost:xx/HelloWorld/Welcome?name=Scott&numtimes=4

Now data is taken from the URL and passed to the controller using the model binder. The controller packages the data into a ViewBag object and passes that object to the view. The view then displays the data as HTML to the user.

Well, that was a kind of an “M” for model, but not the database kind. Let’s take what we’ve learned and create a database of movies.

Adding a Model

In this section you’ll add some classes for managing movies in a database. These classes will be the “model” part of the ASP.NET MVC application.

You’ll use a .NET Framework data-access technology known as the Entity Framework to define and work with these model classes. The Entity Framework (often referred to as EF) supports a development paradigm called Code First. Code First allows you to create model objects by writing simple classes. (These are also known as POCO classes, from “plain-old CLR objects.”) You can then have the database created on the fly from your classes, which enables a very clean and rapid development workflow.

Adding Model Classes

In Solution Explorer, right click the Models folder, select Add, and then select New Item.

In the Add New Item dialog, select Class then name the class “Movie”.

Add the following five properties to the Movie class:

public class Movie
{
public int ID { get; set; }
public string Title { get; set; }
public DateTime ReleaseDate { get; set; }
public string Genre { get; set; }
public decimal Price { get; set; }
}

Click here to view code as image

We’ll use the Movie class to represent movies in a database. Each instance of a Movie object will correspond to a row within a database table, and each property of the Movie class will map to a column in the table.

In the same file, add the following MovieDBContext class:

public class MovieDBContext : DbContext
{
public DbSet<Movie> Movies { get; set; }
}

Click here to view code as image

The MovieDBContext class represents the Entity Framework movie database context, which handles fetching, storing, and updating Movie class instances in a database. The MovieDBContext derives from the DbContext base class provided by the Entity Framework. For more information about DbContext and DbSet, see Productivity Improvements for the Entity Framework.

In order to be able to reference DbContext and DbSet, you need to add the following using statement at the top of the file:

using System.Data.Entity;

Click here to view code as image

The complete Movie.cs file is shown below. (Several using statements that are not needed have been removed.)

using System;
using System.Data.Entity;

namespace MvcMovie.Models
{
public class Movie
{
public int ID { get; set; }
public string Title { get; set; }
public DateTime ReleaseDate { get; set; }
public string Genre { get; set; }
public decimal Price { get; set; }
}

public class MovieDBContext : DbContext
{
public DbSet<Movie> Movies { get; set; }
}
}

Click here to view code as image

Creating a Connection String and Working with SQL Server LocalDB

The MovieDBContext class you created handles the task of connecting to the database and mapping Movie objects to database records. One question you might ask, though, is how to specify which database it will connect to. You’ll do that by adding connection information in the Web.config file of the application.

Open the application root Web.config file. (Not the Web.config file in the Views folder.) Open the Web.config file outlined in red.

Add the following connection string to the <connectionStrings> element in the Web.config file.

<add name="MovieDBContext"
connectionString="Data
Source=(LocalDB)\v11.0;AttachDbFilename=|DataDirectory|\Movies.mdf;Integrated
Security=True"
providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"
/>

Click here to view code as image

The following example shows a portion of the Web.config file with the new connection string added:

<connectionStrings>
<add name="DefaultConnection"
connectionString="Data Source=(LocalDb)\v11.0;Initial Catalog=aspnet-MvcMovie-
2012213181139;Integrated Security=true"
providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"
/>
<add name="MovieDBContext"
connectionString="Data
Source=(LocalDB)\v11.0;AttachDbFilename=|DataDirectory|\Movies.mdf;Integrated
Security=True"
providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"
/>
</connectionStrings>

Click here to view code as image

This small amount of code and XML is everything you need to write in order to represent and store the movie data in a database.

Next, you’ll build a new MoviesController class that you can use to display the movie data and allow users to create new movie listings.

Accessing Your Model’s Data from a Controller

In this section, you’ll create a new MoviesController class and write code that retrieves the movie data and displays it in the browser using a view template.

Build the application before going on to the next step.

Right-click the Controllers folder and create a new MoviesController controller. The options below will not appear until you build your application. Select the following options:

- Controller name: MoviesController. (This is the default.)

- Template: Controller with read/write actions and views, using Entity Framework.

- Model class: Movie (MvcMovie.Models).

- Data context class: MovieDBContext (MvcMovie.Models).

- Views: Razor (CSHTML). (The default.)

Click Add. Visual Studio Express creates the following files and folders:

- A MoviesController.cs file in the project’s Controllers folder.

- A Movies folder in the project’s Views folder.

- Create.cshtml, Delete.cshtml, Details.cshtml, Edit.cshtml, and Index.cshtml in the new Views\Movies folder.

ASP.NET MVC 4 automatically created the CRUD (create, read, update, and delete) action methods and views for you (the automatic creation of CRUD action methods and views is known as scaffolding). You now have a fully functional web application that lets you create, list, edit, and delete movie entries.

Run the application and browse to the Movies controller by appending /Movies to the URL in the address bar of your browser. Because the application is relying on the default routing (defined in the Global.asax file), the browser request http://localhost:xxxxx/Movies is routed to the default Index action method of the Movies controller. In other words, the browser request http://localhost:xxxxx/Movies is effectively the same as the browser request http://localhost:xxxxx/Movies/Index. The result is an empty list of movies, because you haven’t added any yet.

Creating a Movie

Select the Create New link. Enter some details about a movie and then click the Create button.

Clicking the Create button causes the form to be posted to the server, where the movie information is saved in the database. You’re then redirected to the /Movies URL, where you can see the newly created movie in the listing.

Create a couple more movie entries. Try the Edit, Details, and Delete links, which are all functional.

Examining the Generated Code

Open the Controllers\MoviesController.cs file and examine the generated Index method. A portion of the movie controller with the Index method is shown below.

public class MoviesController : Controller
{
private MovieDBContext db = new MovieDBContext();

//
// GET: /Movies/

public ActionResult Index()
{
return View(db.Movies.ToList());
}

Click here to view code as image

The following line from the MoviesController class instantiates a movie database context, as described previously. You can use the movie database context to query, edit, and delete movies.

private MovieDBContext db = new MovieDBContext();

Click here to view code as image

A request to the Movies controller returns all the entries in the Movies table of the movie database and then passes the results to the Index view.

Strongly Typed Models and the @model Keyword

Earlier in this tutorial, you saw how a controller can pass data or objects to a view template using the ViewBag object. The ViewBag is a dynamic object that provides a convenient late-bound way to pass information to a view.

ASP.NET MVC also provides the ability to pass strongly typed data or objects to a view template. This strongly typed approach enables better compile-time checking of your code and richer IntelliSense in the Visual Studio Express editor. The scaffolding mechanism in Visual Studio Express used this approach with the MoviesController class and view templates when it created the methods and views.

In the Controllers\MoviesController.cs file examine the generated Details method. A portion of the movie controller with the Details method is shown below.

public ActionResult Details(int id = 0)
{
Movie movie = db.Movies.Find(id);
if (movie == null)
{
return HttpNotFound();
}
return View(movie);
}

Click here to view code as image

An instance of the Movie model is passed to the Details view.

By including a @model statement at the top of the view template file, you can specify the type of object that the view expects. When you created the movie controller, Visual Studio Express automatically included the following @model statement at the top of the Details.cshtml file:

@model MvcMovie.Models.Movie

Click here to view code as image

This @model directive allows you to access the movie that the controller passed to the view by using a Model object that’s strongly typed. For example, in the Details.cshtml template, the code passes each movie field to the DisplayNameFor and DisplayFor HTML Helpers with the strongly typed Model object. The Create and Edit methods and view templates also pass a movie model object.

Examine the Index.cshtml view template and the Index method in the MoviesController.cs file. Notice how the code creates a List object when it calls the View helper method in the Index action method. The code then passes this Movies list from the controller to the view:

public ActionResult Index()
{
return View(db.Movies.ToList());
}

Click here to view code as image

When you created the movie controller, Visual Studio Express automatically included the following @model statement at the top of the Index.cshtml file:

@model IEnumerable<MvcMovie.Models.Movie>

Click here to view code as image

This @model directive allows you to access the list of movies that the controller passed to the view by using a Model object that’s strongly typed. For example, in the Index.cshtml template, the code loops through the movies by doing a foreach statement over the strongly typed Model object:

@foreach (var item in Model) {
<tr>
<td>
@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Title)
</td>
<td>
@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.ReleaseDate)
</td>
<td>
@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Genre)
</td>
<td>
@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Price)
</td>
<th>
@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Rating)
</th>
<td>
@Html.ActionLink("Edit", "Edit", new { id=item.ID }) |
@Html.ActionLink("Details", "Details", { id=item.ID })  |
@Html.ActionLink("Delete", "Delete", { id=item.ID })
</td>
</tr>
}

Click here to view code as image

Because the Model object is strongly typed (as an IEnumerable<Movie> object), each item object in the loop is typed as Movie. Among other benefits, this means that you get compile-time checking of the code and full IntelliSense support in the code editor:

Working with SQL Server LocalDB

Entity Framework Code First detected that the database connection string that was provided pointed to a Movies database that didn’t exist yet, so Code First created the database automatically. You can verify that it’s been created by looking in the App_Data folder. If you don’t see the Movies.sdf file, click the Show All Files button in the Solution Explorer toolbar, click the Refresh button, and then expand the App_Data folder.

Double-click Movies.mdf to open DATABASE EXPLORER. Then expand the Tables folder to see the tables that have been created in the database.

There are two tables, one for the Movie entity set and the EdmMetadata table. The EdmMetadata table is used by the Entity Framework to determine when the model and the database are out of sync.

Right-click the Movies table and select Show Table Data to see the data you created.

Right-click the Movies table and select Open Table Definition to see the table structure that Entity Framework Code First created for you.

Notice how the schema of the Movies table maps to the Movie class you created earlier. Entity Framework Code First automatically created this schema for you based on your Movie class.

When you’re finished, close the connection by right clicking Movies.mdf and selecting Close Connection. (If you don’t close the connection, you might get an error the next time you run the project).

You now have the database and a simple listing page to display content from it. In the next tutorial, we’ll examine the rest of the scaffolded code and add a SearchIndex method and a SearchIndex view that lets you search for movies in this database.

Examining the Edit Methods and Edit View

In this section, you’ll examine the generated action methods and views for the movie controller. Then you’ll add a custom search page.

Run the application and browse to the Movies controller by appending /Movies to the URL in the address bar of your browser. Hold the mouse pointer over an Edit link to see the URL that it links to.

The Edit link was generated by the Html.ActionLink method in the Views\Movies\Index.cshtml view:

@Html.ActionLink("Edit", "Edit", new { id=item.ID })

Click here to view code as image

The Html object is a helper that’s exposed using a property on the System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage base class. The ActionLink method of the helper makes it easy to dynamically generate HTML hyperlinks that link to action methods on controllers. The first argument to the ActionLink method is the link text to render (for example, <a>Edit Me</a>). The second argument is the name of the action method to invoke. The final argument is an anonymous object that generates the route data (in this case, the ID of 4).

The generated link shown in the previous image is http://localhost:xxxxx/Movies/Edit/4. The default route (established in Global.asax.cs) takes the URL pattern {controller}/{action}/{id}. Therefore, ASP.NET translates http://localhost:xxxxx/Movies/Edit/4 into a request to the Edit action method of the Movies controller with the parameter ID equal to 4.

You can also pass action method parameters using a query string. For example, the URL http://localhost:xxxxx/Movies/Edit?ID=4 also passes the parameter ID of 4 to the Edit action method of the Movies controller.

Open the Movies controller. The two Edit action methods are shown below.

//
// GET: /Movies/Edit/5

public ActionResult Edit(int id = 0)
{
Movie movie = db.Movies.Find(id);
if (movie == null)
{
return HttpNotFound();
}
return View(movie);
}

//
// POST: /Movies/Edit/5

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Edit(Movie movie)
{
if (ModelState.IsValid)
{
db.Entry(movie).State = EntityState.Modified;
db.SaveChanges();
return RedirectToAction("Index");
}
return View(movie);
}

Click here to view code as image

Notice the second Edit action method is preceded by the HttpPost attribute. This attribute specifies that that overload of the Edit method can be invoked only for POST requests. You could apply the HttpGet attribute to the first edit method, but that’s not necessary because it’s the default. (We’ll refer to action methods that are implicitly assigned the HttpGet attribute as HttpGet methods.)

The HttpGet Edit method takes the movie ID parameter, looks up the movie using the Entity Framework Find method, and returns the selected movie to the Edit view. The ID parameter specifies a default value of zero if the Edit method is called without a parameter. If a movie cannot be found, HttpNotFound is returned. When the scaffolding system created the Edit view, it examined the Movie class and created code to render <label> and <input> elements for each property of the class. The following example shows the Edit view that was generated:

@model MvcMovie.Models.Movie

@{
ViewBag.Title = "Edit";
}

<h2>Edit</h2>

<script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.min.js")"
type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.unobtrusive.min.js")"
type="text/javascript"></script>

@using (Html.BeginForm()) {
@Html.ValidationSummary(true)
<fieldset>
<legend>Movie</legend>

@Html.HiddenFor(model => model.ID)

<div class="editor-label">
@Html.LabelFor(model => model.Title)
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
@Html.EditorFor(model => model.Title)
@Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Title)
</div>

<div class="editor-label">
@Html.LabelFor(model => model.ReleaseDate)
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
@Html.EditorFor(model => model.ReleaseDate)
@Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.ReleaseDate)
</div>

<div class="editor-label">
@Html.LabelFor(model => model.Genre)
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
@Html.EditorFor(model => model.Genre)
@Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Genre)
</div>

<div class="editor-label">
@Html.LabelFor(model => model.Price)
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
@Html.EditorFor(model => model.Price)
@Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Price)
</div>

<p>
<input type="submit" value="Save" />
</p>
</fieldset>
}

<div>
@Html.ActionLink("Back to List", "Index")
</div>

Click here to view code as image

Notice how the view template has a @model MvcMovie.Models.Movie statement at the top of the file — this specifies that the view expects the model for the view template to be of type Movie.

The scaffolded code uses several helper methods to streamline the HTML markup. The Html.LabelFor helper displays the name of the field (“Title”, “ReleaseDate”, “Genre”, or “Price”). The Html.EditorFor helper renders an HTML <input> element. The Html.ValidationMessageFor helper displays any validation messages associated with that property.

Run the application and navigate to the /Movies URL. Click an Edit link. In the browser, view the source for the page. The HTML for the form element is shown below.

<form action="/Movies/Edit/4" method="post">    <fieldset>
<legend>Movie</legend>

<input data-val="true" data-val-number="The field ID must be a number." data-
val-required="The ID field is required." id="ID" name="ID" type="hidden" value="4" />

<div class="editor-label">
<label for="Title">Title</label>
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
<input class="text-box single-line" id="Title" name="Title" type="text"
value="Rio Bravo" />
<span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="Title" data-valmsg-
replace="true"></span>
</div>

<div class="editor-label">
<label for="ReleaseDate">ReleaseDate</label>
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
<input class="text-box single-line" data-val="true" data-val-date="The
field ReleaseDate must be a date." data-val-required="The ReleaseDate field is
required." id="ReleaseDate" name="ReleaseDate" type="text" value="4/15/1959 12:00:00
AM" />
<span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="ReleaseDate" data-
valmsg-replace="true"></span>
</div>

<div class="editor-label">
<label for="Genre">Genre</label>
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
<input class="text-box single-line" id="Genre" name="Genre" type="text"
value="Western" />
<span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="Genre" data-valmsg-
replace="true"></span>
</div>

<div class="editor-label">
<label for="Price">Price</label>
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
<input class="text-box single-line" data-val="true" data-val-number="The
field Price must be a number." data-val-required="The Price field is required."
id="Price" name="Price" type="text" value="2.99" />
<span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="Price" data-valmsg-
replace="true"></span>
</div>

<p>
<input type="submit" value="Save" />
</p>
</fieldset>
</form>

Click here to view code as image

The <input> elements are in an HTML <form> element whose action attribute is set to post to the /Movies/Edit URL. The form data will be posted to the server when the Edit button is clicked.

Processing the POST Request

The following listing shows the HttpPost version of the Edit action method.

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Edit(Movie movie)
{
if (ModelState.IsValid)
{
db.Entry(movie).State = EntityState.Modified;
db.SaveChanges();
return RedirectToAction("Index");
}
return View(movie);
}

Click here to view code as image

The ASP.NET MVC model binder takes the posted form values and creates a Movie object that’s passed as the movie parameter. The ModelState.IsValid method verifies that the data submitted in the form can be used to modify (edit or update) a Movie object. If the data is valid, the movie data is saved to the Movies collection of the db (MovieDBContext instance). The new movie data is saved to the database by calling the SaveChanges method of MovieDBContext. After saving the data, the code redirects the user to the Index action method of the MoviesController class, which displays the of movie collection, including the changes just made..

If the posted values aren’t valid, they are redisplayed in the form. The Html.ValidationMessageFor helpers in the Edit.cshtml view template take care of displaying appropriate error messages.

Note about locales If you normally work with a locale other than English, see Supporting ASP.NET MVC Validation with Non-English Locales. The decimal field may require a common, not a decimal point. As a temporary fix, you can add the globalization element to the projects root web.config file. The following code shows the globalization element with the culture set to United States English.

<system.web>

<globalization culture ="en-US" />

<!--elements removed for clarity-->

</system.web>

Click here to view code as image

All the HttpGet methods follow a similar pattern. They get a movie object (or list of objects, in the case of Index), and pass the model to the view. The Create method passes an empty movie object to the Create view. All the methods that create, edit, delete, or otherwise modify data do so in the HttpPost overload of the method. Modifying data in an HTTP GET method is a security risk, as described in the blog post entry ASP.NET MVC Tip #46 – Don’t use Delete Links because they create Security Holes. Modifying data in a GET method also violates HTTP best practices and the architectural REST pattern, which specifies that GET requests should not change the state of your application. In other words, performing a GET operation should be a safe operation that has no side effects and doesn’t modify your persisted data.

Adding a Search Method and Search View

In this section you’ll add a SearchIndex action method that lets you search movies by genre or name. This will be available using the /Movies/SearchIndex URL. The request will display an HTML form that contains input elements that a user can enter in order to search for a movie. When a user submits the form, the action method will get the search values posted by the user and use the values to search the database.

Displaying the SearchIndex Form

Start by adding a SearchIndex action method to the existing MoviesController class. The method will return a view that contains an HTML form. Here’s the code:

public ActionResult SearchIndex(string searchString)
{
var movies = from m in db.Movies
select m;

if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(searchString))
{
movies = movies.Where(s => s.Title.Contains(searchString));
}

return View(movies);
}

Click here to view code as image

The first line of the SearchIndex method creates the following LINQ query to select the movies:

var movies = from m in db.Movies
select m;

Click here to view code as image

The query is defined at this point, but hasn’t yet been run against the data store.

If the searchString parameter contains a string, the movies query is modified to filter on the value of the search string, using the following code:

if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(searchString))
{
movies = movies.Where(s => s.Title.Contains(searchString));
}

Click here to view code as image

The s => s.Title code above is a Lambda Expression. Lambdas are used in method-based LINQ queries as arguments to standard query operator methods such as Where method used in the above code. LINQ queries are not executed when they are defined or when they are modified by calling a method such as Where or OrderBy. Instead, query execution is deferred, which means that the evaluation of an expression is delayed until its realized value is actually iterated over or the ToList method is called. In the SearchIndex sample, the query is executed in the SearchIndex view. For more information about deferred query execution, see Query Execution.

Now you can implement the SearchIndex view that will display the form to the user. Right-click inside the SearchIndex method and then click Add View. In the Add View dialog box, specify that you’re going to pass a Movie object to the view template as its model class. In the Scaffold template list, choose List, then click Add.

When you click the Add button, the Views\Movies\SearchIndex.cshtml view template is created. Because you selected List in the Scaffold template list, Visual Studio Express automatically generated (scaffolded) some default markup in the view. The scaffolding created an HTML form. It examined the Movie class and created code to render <label> elements for each property of the class. The listing below shows the Create view that was generated:

@model IEnumerable<MvcMovie.Models.Movie>

@{
ViewBag.Title = "SearchIndex";
}

<h2>SearchIndex</h2>

<p>
@Html.ActionLink("Create New", "Create")
</p>
<table>
<tr>
<th>
Title
</th>
<th>
ReleaseDate
</th>
<th>
Genre
</th>
<th>
Price
</th>
<th></th>
</tr>

@foreach (var item in Model) {
<tr>
<td>
@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Title)
</td>
<td>
@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.ReleaseDate)
</td>
<td>
@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Genre)
</td>
<td>
@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Price)
</td>
<td>
@Html.ActionLink("Edit", "Edit", new { id=item.ID }) |
@Html.ActionLink("Details", "Details", new { id=item.ID }) |
@Html.ActionLink("Delete", "Delete", new { id=item.ID })
</td>
</tr>
}

</table>

Click here to view code as image

Run the application and navigate to /Movies/SearchIndex. Append a query string such as ?searchString=ghost to the URL. The filtered movies are displayed.

If you change the signature of the SearchIndex method to have a parameter named id, the id parameter will match the {id} placeholder for the default routes set in the Global.asax file.

{controller}/{action}/{id}

Click here to view code as image

The original SearchIndex method looks like this::

public ActionResult SearchIndex(string searchString)
{
var movies = from m in db.Movies
select m;

if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(searchString))
{
movies = movies.Where(s => s.Title.Contains(searchString));
}

return View(movies);
}

Click here to view code as image

The modified SearchIndex method would look as follows:

public ActionResult SearchIndex(string id)
{
string searchString = id;
var movies = from m in db.Movies
select m;

if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(searchString))
{
movies = movies.Where(s => s.Title.Contains(searchString));
}

return View(movies);
}

Click here to view code as image

You can now pass the search title as route data (a URL segment) instead of as a query string value.

However, you can’t expect users to modify the URL every time they want to search for a movie. So now you you’ll add UI to help them filter movies. If you changed the signature of the SearchIndex method to test how to pass the route-bound ID parameter, change it back so that your SearchIndex method takes a string parameter named searchString:

public ActionResult SearchIndex(string searchString)
{
var movies = from m in db.Movies
select m;

if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(searchString))
{
movies = movies.Where(s => s.Title.Contains(searchString));
}

return View(movies);
}

Click here to view code as image

Open the Views\Movies\SearchIndex.cshtml file, and just after @Html.ActionLink(“Create New”, “Create”), add the following:

@using (Html.BeginForm()){
<p> Title: @Html.TextBox("SearchString")<br />
<input type="submit" value="Filter" /></p>
}

Click here to view code as image

The following example shows a portion of the Views\Movies\SearchIndex.cshtml file with the added filtering markup.

@model IEnumerable<MvcMovie.Models.Movie>

@{
ViewBag.Title = "SearchIndex";
}

<h2>SearchIndex</h2>

<p>
@Html.ActionLink("Create New", "Create")

@using (Html.BeginForm()){
<p> Title: @Html.TextBox("SearchString") <br />
<input type="submit" value="Filter" /></p>
}
</p>

Click here to view code as image

The Html.BeginForm helper creates an opening <form> tag. The Html.BeginForm helper causes the form to post to itself when the user submits the form by clicking the Filter button.

Run the application and try searching for a movie.

There’s no HttpPost overload of the SearchIndex method. You don’t need it, because the method isn’t changing the state of the application, just filtering data.

You could add the following HttpPost SearchIndex method. In that case, the action invoker would match the HttpPost SearchIndex method, and the HttpPost SearchIndex method would run as shown in the image below.

[HttpPost]
public string SearchIndex(FormCollection fc, string searchString)
{
return "<h3> From [HttpPost]SearchIndex: " + searchString + "</h3>";
}

Click here to view code as image

However, even if you add this HttpPost version of the SearchIndex method, there’s a limitation in how this has all been implemented. Imagine that you want to bookmark a particular search or you want to send a link to friends that they can click in order to see the same filtered list of movies. Notice that the URL for the HTTP POST request is the same as the URL for the GET request (localhost:xxxxx/Movies/SearchIndex) -- there’s no search information in the URL itself. Right now, the search string information is sent to the server as a form field value. This means you can’t capture that search information to bookmark or send to friends in a URL.

The solution is to use an overload of BeginForm that specifies that the POST request should add the search information to the URL and that is should be routed to the HttpGet version of the SearchIndex method. Replace the existing parameterless BeginForm method with the following:

@using (Html.BeginForm("SearchIndex","Movies",FormMethod.Get))

Click here to view code as image

Now when you submit a search, the URL contains a search query string. Searching will also go to the HttpGet SearchIndex action method, even if you have a HttpPost SearchIndex method.

Adding Search by Genre

If you added the HttpPost version of the SearchIndex method, delete it now.

Next, you’ll add a feature to let users search for movies by genre. Replace the SearchIndex method with the following code:

public ActionResult SearchIndex(string movieGenre, string searchString)
{
var GenreLst = new List<string>();

var GenreQry = from d in db.Movies
orderby d.Genre
select d.Genre;
GenreLst.AddRange(GenreQry.Distinct());
ViewBag.movieGenre = new SelectList(GenreLst);

var movies = from m in db.Movies
select m;

if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(searchString))
{
movies = movies.Where(s => s.Title.Contains(searchString));
}

if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(movieGenre))
return View(movies);
else
{
return View(movies.Where(x => x.Genre == movieGenre));
}

}

Click here to view code as image

This version of the SearchIndex method takes an additional parameter, namely movieGenre. The first few lines of code create a List object to hold movie genres from the database.

The following code is a LINQ query that retrieves all the genres from the database.

var GenreQry = from d in db.Movies
orderby d.Genre
select d.Genre;

Click here to view code as image

The code uses the AddRange method of the generic List collection to add all the distinct genres to the list. (Without the Distinct modifier, duplicate genres would be added — for example, comedy would be added twice in our sample). The code then stores the list of genres in the ViewBag object.

The following code shows how to check the movieGenre parameter. If it’s not empty, the code further constrains the movies query to limit the selected movies to the specified genre.

if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(movieGenre))
return View(movies);
else
{
return View(movies.Where(x => x.Genre == movieGenre));
}

Click here to view code as image

Adding Markup to the SearchIndex View to Support Search by Genre

Add an Html.DropDownList helper to the Views\Movies\SearchIndex.cshtml file, just before the TextBox helper. The completed markup is shown below:

<p>
@Html.ActionLink("Create New", "Create")
@using (Html.BeginForm("SearchIndex","Movies",FormMethod.Get)){
<p>Genre: @Html.DropDownList("movieGenre", "All")
Title: @Html.TextBox("SearchString")
<input type="submit" value="Filter" /></p>
}
</p>

Click here to view code as image

Run the application and browse to /Movies/SearchIndex. Try a search by genre, by movie name, and by both criteria.

In this section you examined the CRUD action methods and views generated by the framework. You created a search action method and view that let users search by movie title and genre. In the next section, you’ll look at how to add a property to the Movie model and how to add an initializer that will automatically create a test database.

Adding a New Field to the Movie Model and Table

In this section you’ll make some changes to the model classes and learn how you can update the database schema to match the model changes.

Adding a Rating Property to the Movie Model

Start by adding a new Rating property to the existing Movie class. Open the Models\Movie.cs file and add the Rating property like this one:

public string Rating { get; set; }

Click here to view code as image

The complete Movie class now looks like the following code:

public class Movie
{
public int      ID          { get; set; }
public string   Title       { get; set; }
public DateTime ReleaseDate { get; set; }
public string   Genre       { get; set; }
public decimal  Price       { get; set; }
public string   Rating      { get; set; }
}

Click here to view code as image

Recompile the application using the Build > Build Movie menu command.

Now that you’ve updated the Model class, you also need to update the \Views\Movies\Index.cshtml and \Views\Movies\Create.cshtml view templates in order to display the new Rating property in the browser view.

Open the \Views\Movies\Index.cshtml file and add a <th>Rating</th> column heading just after the Price column. Then add a <td> column near the end of the template to render the @item.Rating value. Below is what the updated Index.cshtml view template looks like:

@model IEnumerable<MvcMovie.Models.Movie>

@{
ViewBag.Title = "Index";
}

<h2>Index</h2>

<p>
@Html.ActionLink("Create New", "Create")
</p>
<table>
<tr>
<th>
@Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Title)
</th>
<th>
@Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.ReleaseDate)
</th>
<th>
@Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Genre)
</th>
<th>
@Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Price)
</th>
<th>
@Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Rating)
</th>
<th></th>
</tr>

@foreach (var item in Model) {
<tr>
<td>
@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Title)
</td>
<td>
@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.ReleaseDate)
</td>
<td>
@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Genre)
</td>
<td>
@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Price)
</td>
<td>
@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Rating)
</td>
<td>
@Html.ActionLink("Edit", "Edit", new { id=item.ID }) |
@Html.ActionLink("Details", "Details", new { id=item.ID }) |
@Html.ActionLink("Delete", "Delete", new { id=item.ID })
</td>
</tr>
}

</table>

Click here to view code as image

Next, open the \Views\Movies\Create.cshtml file and add the following markup near the end of the form. This renders a text box so that you can specify a rating when a new movie is created.

<div class="editor-label">
@Html.LabelFor(model => model.Rating)
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
@Html.EditorFor(model => model.Rating)
@Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Rating)
</div>

Click here to view code as image

Managing Model and Database Schema Differences

You’ve now updated the application code to support the new Rating property.

Now run the application and navigate to the /Movies URL. When you do this, though, you’ll see one of the following errors:

You’re seeing this error because the updated Movie model class in the application is now different than the schema of the Movie table of the existing database. (There’s no Rating column in the database table.)

By default, when you use Entity Framework Code First to automatically create a database, as you did earlier in this tutorial, Code First adds a table to the database to help track whether the schema of the database is in sync with the model classes it was generated from. If they aren’t in sync, the Entity Framework throws an error. This makes it easier to track down issues at development time that you might otherwise only find (by obscure errors) at run time. The sync-checking feature is what causes the error message to be displayed that you just saw.

There are two approaches to resolving the error:

1. Have the Entity Framework automatically drop and re-create the database based on the new model class schema. This approach is very convenient when doing active development on a test database; it allows you to quickly evolve the model and database schema together. The downside, though, is that you lose existing data in the database — so you don’t want to use this approach on a production database!

2. Explicitly modify the schema of the existing database so that it matches the model classes. The advantage of this approach is that you keep your data. You can make this change either manually or by creating a database change script.

For this tutorial, we’ll use the first approach — you’ll have the Entity Framework Code First automatically re-create the database anytime the model changes.

Automatically Re-Creating the Database on Model Changes

Let’s update the application so that Code First automatically drops and re-creates the database anytime you change the model for the application.

Warning You should enable this approach of automatically dropping and re-creating the database only when you’re using a development or test database, and never on a production database that contains real data. Using it on a production server can lead to data loss.

Stop the debugger. In Solution Explorer, right click the Models folder, select Add, and then select New Item.

In the Add New Item dialog, select Class then name the class “MovieInitializer”. Update the MovieInitializer class to contain the following code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Data.Entity;

namespace MvcMovie.Models {
public class MovieInitializer : DropCreateDatabaseIfModelChanges
<MovieDBContext>
{
protected override void Seed(MovieDBContext context) {
var movies = new List<Movie> {

new Movie { Title = "When Harry Met Sally",
ReleaseDate=DateTime.Parse("1989-1-11"),
Genre="Romantic Comedy",
Rating="R",
Price=7.99M},

new Movie { Title = "Ghostbusters ",
ReleaseDate=DateTime.Parse("1984-3-13"),
Genre="Comedy",
Rating="R",
Price=8.99M},

new Movie { Title = "Ghostbusters 2",
ReleaseDate=DateTime.Parse("1986-2-23"),
Genre="Comedy",
Rating="R",
Price=9.99M},

new Movie { Title = "Rio Bravo",
ReleaseDate=DateTime.Parse("1959-4-15"),
Genre="Western",
Rating="R",
Price=3.99M},
};

movies.ForEach(d => context.Movies.Add(d));
}
}
}

Click here to view code as image

The MovieInitializer class specifies that the database used by the model should be dropped and automatically re-created if the model classes ever change. DropCreateDatabaseIfModelChanges initializer specifies the DB should be re-created only if the schema changes. Alternatively, you could use the DropCreateDatabaseAlways initializer to always recreate and re-seed the database with data the first time that a context is used in the application domain. The DropCreateDatabaseAlways approach is useful in some integration testing scenarios. The code that you inserted into the MovieInitializer class includes a includes a Seed method that specifies some default data to automatically add to the database any time it’s created (or re-created). This provides a useful way to populate the database with some test data, without requiring you to manually populate it each time you make a model change.

Now that you’ve defined the MovieInitializer class, you’ll want to wire it up so that each time the application runs, it checks whether the model classes are different from the schema in the database. If they are, you can run the initializer to re-create the database to match the model and then populate the database with the sample data.

Open the Global.asax filet:

The Global.asax file contains the class that defines the entire application for the project, and contains an Application_Start event handler that runs when the application first starts.

At the beginning of the Application_Start method, add a call to Database.SetInitializer as shown below:

protected void Application_Start()
{
Database.SetInitializer<MovieDBContext>(new MovieInitializer());
AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();

// Use LocalDB for Entity Framework by default
Database.DefaultConnectionFactory = new SqlConnectionFactory("Data
Source=(localdb)\v11.0; Integrated Security=True; MultipleActiveResultSets=True");

RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);
RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);

BundleTable.Bundles.RegisterTemplateBundles();
}

Click here to view code as image

Put the cursor on the red squiggly line (on MovieDBContext, or MovieInitializer) right click and select Resolve, then using MvcMovie.Models;

Alternatively, add the using statement to the top of the file. The using statement references the namespace where our MovieInitializer class lives:

using MvcMovie.Models;              // MovieInitializer

Click here to view code as image

The Database.SetInitializer statement you just added indicates that the database used by the MovieDBContext instance should be automatically deleted and re-created if the schema and the database don’t match. And as you saw, it will also populate the database with the sample data that’s specified in the MovieInitializer class.

Close the Global.asax file.

Re-run the application and navigate to the /Movies URL. When the application starts, it detects that the model structure no longer matches the database schema. It automatically re-creates the database to match the new model structure and populates the database with the sample movies:

<=“”>

Click the Create New link to add a new movie. Note that you can add a rating.

Click Create. The new movie, including the rating, now shows up in the movies listing:

You should also add the Rating field to the Edit view template.

In this section you saw how you can modify model objects and keep the database in sync with the changes. You also learned a way to populate a newly created database with sample data so you can try out scenarios. Next, let’s look at how you can add richer validation logic to the model classes and enable some business rules to be enforced.

Adding Validation to the Model

In this this section you’ll add validation logic to the Movie model, and you’ll ensure that the validation rules are enforced any time a user attempts to create or edit a movie using the application.

Keeping Things DRY

One of the core design tenets of ASP.NET MVC is DRY (“Don’t Repeat Yourself”). ASP.NET MVC encourages you to specify functionality or behavior only once, and then have it be reflected everywhere in an application. This reduces the amount of code you need to write and makes the code you do write less error prone and easier to maintain.

The validation support provided by ASP.NET MVC and Entity Framework Code First is a great example of the DRY principle in action. You can declaratively specify validation rules in one place (in the model class) and the rules are enforced everywhere in the application.

Let’s look at how you can take advantage of this validation support in the movie application.

Adding Validation Rules to the Movie Model

You’ll begin by adding some validation logic to the Movie class.

Open the Movie.cs file. Add a using statement at the top of the file that references the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace:

using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;

Click here to view code as image

Notice the namespace does not contain System.Web. DataAnnotations provides a built-in set of validation attributes that you can apply declaratively to any class or property.

Now update the Movie class to take advantage of the built-in Required, StringLength, and Range validation attributes. Use the following code as an example of where to apply the attributes.

public class Movie {
public int ID { get; set; }

[Required]
public string Title { get; set; }

[DataType(DataType.Date)]
public DateTime ReleaseDate { get; set; }

[Required]
public string Genre { get; set; }

[Range(1, 100)]
[DataType(DataType.Currency)]
public decimal Price { get; set; }

[StringLength(5)]
public string Rating { get; set; }
}

Click here to view code as image

The validation attributes specify behavior that you want to enforce on the model properties they are applied to. The Required attribute indicates that a property must have a value; in this sample, a movie has to have values for the Title, ReleaseDate, Genre, and Price properties in order to be valid. The Range attribute constrains a value to within a specified range. The StringLength attribute lets you set the maximum length of a string property, and optionally its minimum length. Intrinsic types (such as decimal, int, float, DateTime) are required by default and don’t need the Required attribute.

Code First ensures that the validation rules you specify on a model class are enforced before the application saves changes in the database. For example, the code below will throw an exception when the SaveChanges method is called, because several required Movie property values are missing and the price is zero (which is out of the valid range).

MovieDBContext db = new MovieDBContext();

Movie movie = new Movie();
movie.Title = "Gone with the Wind";
movie.Price = 0.0M;

db.Movies.Add(movie);
db.SaveChanges();        // <= Will throw validation exception

Click here to view code as image

Having validation rules automatically enforced by the .NET Framework helps make your application more robust. It also ensures that you can’t forget to validate something and inadvertently let bad data into the database.

Here’s a complete code listing for the updated Movie.cs file:

using System;
using System.Data.Entity;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;

namespace MvcMovie.Models {
public class Movie {
public int ID { get; set; }

[Required]
public string Title { get; set; }

[DataType(DataType.Date)]
public DateTime ReleaseDate { get; set; }

[Required]
public string Genre { get; set; }

[Range(1, 100)]
[DataType(DataType.Currency)]
public decimal Price { get; set; }

[StringLength(5)]
public string Rating { get; set; }
}

public class MovieDBContext : DbContext {
public DbSet<Movie> Movies { get; set; }
}
}

Click here to view code as image

Validation Error UI in ASP.NET MVC

Re-run the application and navigate to the /Movies URL.

Click the Create New link to add a new movie. Fill out the form with some invalid values and then click the Create button.

Notice how the form has automatically used a red border color to highlight the text boxes that contain invalid data and has emitted an appropriate validation error message next to each one. The errors are enforced both client-side (using JavaScript) and server-side (in case a user has JavaScript disabled).

A real benefit is that you didn’t need to change a single line of code in the MoviesController class or in the Create.cshtml view in order to enable this validation UI. The controller and views you created earlier in this tutorial automatically picked up the validation rules that you specified by using validation attributes on the properties of the Movie model class.

You might have noticed for the properties Title and Genre, the required attribute is not enforced until you submit the form (hit the Create button), or enter text into the input field and removed it. For a field which is initially empty (such as the fields on the Create view) and which has only the required attribute and no other validation attributes, you can do the following to trigger validation:

1. Tab into the field.

2. Enter some text.

3. Tab out.

4. Tab back into the field.

5. Remove the text.

6. Tab out.

The above sequence will trigger the required validation without hitting the submit button. Simply hitting the submit button without entering any of the fields will trigger client side validation. The form data is not sent to the server until there are no client side validation errors. You can test this by putting a break point in the HTTP Post method or using the fiddler tool or the IE 9 F12 developer tools.

How Validation Occurs in the Create View and Create Action Method

You might wonder how the validation UI was generated without any updates to the code in the controller or views. The next listing shows what the Create methods in the MovieController class look like. They’re unchanged from how you created them earlier in this tutorial.

//
// GET: /Movies/Create

public ActionResult Create()
{
return View();
}

//
// POST: /Movies/Create

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Create(Movie movie)
{
if (ModelState.IsValid)
{
db.Movies.Add(movie);
db.SaveChanges();
return RedirectToAction("Index");
}

return View(movie);
}

Click here to view code as image

The first (HTTP GET) Create action method displays the initial Create form. The second ([HttpPost]) version handles the form post. The second Create method (The HttpPost version) calls ModelState.IsValid to check whether the movie has any validation errors. Calling this method evaluates any validation attributes that have been applied to the object. If the object has validation errors, the Create method re-displays the form. If there are no errors, the method saves the new movie in the database. In our movie example we are using, the form is not posted to the server when their are validation errors detected on the client side; the second Create method is never called. If you disable JavaScript in your browser, client validation is disabled and the HTTP POST Create method calls ModelState.IsValid to check whether the movie has any validation errors.

You can set a break point in the HttpPost Create method and verify the method is never called, client side validation will not submit the form data when validation errors are detected. If you disable JavaScript in your browser, submit the form with errors, the break point will be hit. You still get full validation without JavaScript.

The following image shows how to disable JavaScript in the FireFox browser.

The following image shows how to disable JavaScript with the Chrome browser.

Below is the Create.cshtml view template that you scaffolded earlier in the tutorial. It’s used by the action methods shown above both to display the initial form and to redisplay it in the event of an error.

@model MvcMovie.Models.Movie

@{
ViewBag.Title = "Create";
}

<h2>Create</h2>

<script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.min.js")"></script>
<script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.unobtrusive.min.js")"></script>

@using (Html.BeginForm()) {
@Html.ValidationSummary(true)

<fieldset>
<legend>Movie</legend>

<div class="editor-label">
@Html.LabelFor(model => model.Title)
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
@Html.EditorFor(model => model.Title)
@Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Title)
</div>

<div class="editor-label">
@Html.LabelFor(model => model.ReleaseDate)
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
@Html.EditorFor(model => model.ReleaseDate)
@Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.ReleaseDate)
</div>

<div class="editor-label">
@Html.LabelFor(model => model.Genre)
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
@Html.EditorFor(model => model.Genre)
@Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Genre)
</div>

<div class="editor-label">
@Html.LabelFor(model => model.Price)
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
@Html.EditorFor(model => model.Price)
@Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Price)
</div>
<div class="editor-label">
@Html.LabelFor(model => model.Rating)
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
@Html.EditorFor(model => model.Rating)
@Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Rating)
</div>
<p>
<input type="submit" value="Create" />
</p>
</fieldset>
}

<div>
@Html.ActionLink("Back to List", "Index")
</div>

Click here to view code as image

Notice how the code uses an Html.EditorFor helper to output the <input> element for each Movie property. Next to this helper is a call to the Html.ValidationMessageFor helper method. These two helper methods work with the model object that’s passed by the controller to the view (in this case, a Movie object). They automatically look for validation attributes specified on the model and display error messages as appropriate.

What’s really nice about this approach is that neither the controller nor the Create view template knows anything about the actual validation rules being enforced or about the specific error messages displayed. The validation rules and the error strings are specified only in the Movie class.

If you want to change the validation logic later, you can do so in exactly one place by adding validation attributes to the model (in this example, the movie class). You won’t have to worry about different parts of the application being inconsistent with how the rules are enforced — all validation logic will be defined in one place and used everywhere. This keeps the code very clean, and makes it easy to maintain and evolve. And it means that that you’ll be fully honoring the DRY principle.

Adding Formatting to the Movie Model

Open the Movie.cs file and examine the Movie class. The System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace provides formatting attributes in addition to the built-in set of validation attributes. We’ve already applied a DataType enumeration value to the release date and to the price fields. The following code shows the ReleaseDate and Price properties with the appropriate DisplayFormat attribute.

[DataType(DataType.Date)]
public DateTime ReleaseDate { get; set; }

[DataType(DataType.Currency)]
public decimal Price { get; set; }

Click here to view code as image

Alternatively, you could explicitly set a DataFormatString value. The following code shows the release date property with a date format string (namely, “d”). You’d use this to specify that you don’t want to time as part of the release date.

[DisplayFormat(DataFormatString = "{0:d}")]
public DateTime ReleaseDate { get; set; }

Click here to view code as image

The following code formats the Price property as currency.

[DisplayFormat(DataFormatString = "{0:c}")]
public decimal Price { get; set; }

Click here to view code as image

The complete Movie class is shown below.

public class Movie {
public int ID { get; set; }
[Required]
public string Title { get; set; }

[DataType(DataType.Date)]
public DateTime ReleaseDate { get; set; }

[Required]
public string Genre { get; set; }

[Range(1, 100)]
[DataType(DataType.Currency)]
public decimal Price { get; set; }

[StringLength(5)]
public string Rating { get; set; }
}

Click here to view code as image

Run the application and browse to the Movies controller. The release date and price are nicely formatted.

In the next part of the series, we’ll review the application and make some improvements to the automatically generated Details and Delete methods.

Examining the Details and Delete Methods

In this part of the tutorial, you’ll examine the automatically generated Details and Delete methods.

Examining the Details and Delete Methods

Open the Movie controller and examine the Details method.

public ActionResult Details(int id = 0)
{
Movie movie = db.Movies.Find(id);
if (movie == null)
{
return HttpNotFound();
}
return View(movie);
}

Click here to view code as image

Code First makes it easy to search for data using the Find method. An important security feature built into the method is that the code verifies that the Find method has found a movie before the code tries to do anything with it. For example, a hacker could introduce errors into the site by changing the URL created by the links from http://localhost:xxxx/Movies/Details/1 to something like http://localhost:xxxx/Movies/Details/12345 (or some other value that doesn’t represent an actual movie). If you did not check for a null movie, a null movie would result in a database error.

Examine the Delete and DeleteConfirmed methods.

// GET: /Movies/Delete/5

public ActionResult Delete(int id = 0)
{
Movie movie = db.Movies.Find(id);
if (movie == null)
{
return HttpNotFound();
}
return View(movie);
}

//
// POST: /Movies/Delete/5

[HttpPost, ActionName("Delete")]
public ActionResult DeleteConfirmed(int id = 0)
{
Movie movie = db.Movies.Find(id);
if (movie == null)
{
return HttpNotFound();
}
db.Movies.Remove(movie);
db.SaveChanges();
return RedirectToAction("Index");
}

Click here to view code as image

Note that the HTTP Get Delete method doesn’t delete the specified movie, it returns a view of the movie where you can submit (HttpPost) the deletion.. Performing a delete operation in response to a GET request (or for that matter, performing an edit operation, create operation, or any other operation that changes data) opens up a security hole. For more information about this, see Stephen Walther’s blog entry ASP.NET MVC Tip #46 — Don’t use Delete Links because they create Security Holes.

The HttpPost method that deletes the data is named DeleteConfirmed to give the HTTP POST method a unique signature or name. The two method signatures are shown below:

// GET: /Movies/Delete/5
public ActionResult Delete(int id = 0)

//
// POST: /Movies/Delete/5
[HttpPost, ActionName("Delete")]
public ActionResult DeleteConfirmed(int id = 0)

Click here to view code as image

The common language runtime (CLR) requires overloaded methods to have a unique signature (same method name but different list of parameters). However, here you need two Delete methods -- one for GET and one for POST -- that both have the same signature. (They both need to accept a single integer as a parameter.)

To sort this out, you can do a couple of things. One is to give the methods different names. That’s what the scaffolding mechanism did in he preceding example. However, this introduces a small problem: ASP.NET maps segments of a URL to action methods by name, and if you rename a method, routing normally wouldn’t be able to find that method. The solution is what you see in the example, which is to add the ActionName(“Delete”) attribute to the DeleteConfirmed method. This effectively performs mapping for the routing system so that a URL that includes /Delete/ for a POST request will find the DeleteConfirmed method.

Another common way to avoid a problem with methods that have identical names and signatures is to artificially change the signature of the POST method to include an unused parameter. For example, some developers add a parameter type FormCollection that is passed to the POST method, and then simply don’t use the parameter:

public ActionResult Delete(FormCollection fcNotUsed, int id = 0)
{
Movie movie = db.Movies.Find(id);
if (movie == null)
{
return HttpNotFound();
}
db.Movies.Remove(movie);
db.SaveChanges();
return RedirectToAction("Index");
}

Click here to view code as image

Wrapping Up

You now have a complete ASP.NET MVC application that stores data in a SQL Server Compact database. You can create, read, update, delete, and search for movies.

This basic tutorial got you started making controllers, associating them with views, and passing around hard-coded data. Then you created and designed a data model. Entity Framework code-first created a database from the data model on the fly, and the ASP.NET MVC scaffolding system automatically generated the action methods and views for basic CRUD operations. You then added a search form that let users search the database. You changed the database to include a new column of data, and then updated two pages to create and display this new data. You added validation by marking the data model with attributes from the DataAnnotations namespace. The resulting validation runs on the client and on the server.

If you’d like to deploy your application, it’s helpful to first test the application on your local IIS 7 server. You can use this Web Platform Installer link to enable IIS setting for ASP.NET applications. See the following deployment links:

- ASP.NET Deployment Content Map

- Enabling IIS 7.x

- Web Application Projects Deployment

I now encourage you to move on to our intermediate-level Creating an Entity Framework Data Model for an ASP.NET MVC Application and MVC Music Store tutorials, to explore the ASP.NET articles on MSDN, and to check out the many videos and resources at http://asp.net/mvc to learn even more about ASP.NET MVC! The ASP.NET MVC forums are a great place to ask questions.

Enjoy!

— Rick Anderson blogs.msdn.com/rickAndy twitter @RickAndMSFT

— Scott Hanselman http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ twitter @shanselman

Appendix: Code and Table Images

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text

Click here to view code as text